Ep 99 RV Adventurer Michelle Fishburne

“Tired of being a deputy”: Michelle Fishburne of Who We Are Now talks about turning a one-two-three punch of pandemic life changes into a 12,000 mile road trip, a book deal, and a newfound calling as an oral historian.

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“Tired of being a deputy”: Michelle Fishburne of Who We Are Now talks about turning a one-two-three punch of pandemic life changes into a 12,000 mile road trip, a book deal, and a newfound calling as an oral historian.

Find Michelle on the web:

Website:Who We Are Now
Instagram: @WhoWeAreNowUSA
Instagram behind the scenes: @MichelleFishburne
Facebook: @WhoWeAreNowUSA
LinkedIn

She’s on a journey, but not in a Bachelor way. Here’s to the band that plays the HELL out of air keyboards.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 99 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on June 8, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email [email protected] ***

Michelle Fishburne 00:01

Failure is something that I actually really embrace and look forward to because it means I get to innovate. It means that all those little gray cells in my head get to start spinning and creating something new.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:14

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:38

I want to take a moment before today’s episode to tell you about a brand-new book I just read that’s one of the latest entries in the long-running 33 1/3 book series, from Bloomsbury.

If you aren’t familiar with 33 1/3… Each volume in the series is written by a different writer and focuses on one album. I just ripped through one of the latest entries – on Duran Duran’s 1982 album Rio – I know all the Duran Duran ladies are screaming right now. The book was written by Annie Zaleski, the award-winning music writer whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, NPR Music, StereoGum, Time, and more. Now, of course I owned Rio, Duran Duran’s big breakthrough album, back in 1982, and I know some Midlife Mixtape listeners are big Duran Duran stans from way back. But I can’t say that I had listened to Rio all the way through during this century. After reading Annie’s nuanced and comprehensive take on the album, I’ve been listening to it nonstop.

The book details how Rio wasn’t a success everywhere at first; in fact, the LP had to be remixed and reissued before it found an audience in America. However, thanks to a combination of colorful music videos, which established Duran Duran as leaders of an MTV-driven second British Invasion, as well as incredibly hard work and good timing, Rio established Duran Duran as one of the most innovative and beloved pop-rock bands of the ’80s. And the 33 1/3 book on Rio really opened my eyes to how seminal that album was – for the band and for the never-ending evolution of pop music. It’s available now via Bloomsbury, and you can also order wherever else you like to order books! Go to your local bookseller and ask them to get you 33 1/3 latest on Rio.

[MUSIC]

Nancy Davis Kho 02:20

Hello and welcome to Episode 99 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, or as Nina might sing, Neun und Neunzig Podcast Episodes. I’m very glad to be spending some time with you today. It’s almost as good as calling you from a wall phone in the kitchen with a long curly cord that’s stretched into a closet so you could talk in peace.

So if you understand simple addition you know that the next episode is 100. ONE HUNDRED. I can’t believe I made a hundred podcast episodes.

I obviously HAVE to do something special for this centennial episode, because in addition to reaching triple digits there have been a couple other milestones in the past month:

4 years of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast
10 years of blogging at MidlifeMixtape.com
200,000+ downloads of the podcast

If that doesn’t call for a party, I don’t know what does. Especially when all of us at this point in 2021 have earned the right to celebrate any and every success, including finding a good parking spot at the grocery story.

So in that spirit, Episode 100 is going to be a party, where I turn the interviewer seat over to YOU for a change.

Ask me anything. Send me your questions, about midlife, music, podcasting, gratitude, Oakland, Rochester, writing, reading, Netflix. I can talk about Outlander on Starz, whatEVER you want to ask.

Please understand that I’m not doing this in the spirit of “I’m so interesting everybody should know about me!” but rather, the fact that I’ve been asking you questions for the past 100 episodes like your teenage jobs, and your first concerts, and your pandemic grief and gratitude. It’s a little rude, I think, to not give you a chance to ask me questions. I hope that’s how you will take it. It feels a little weird to say like, “Hey, let me talk for a whole episode!” but I hope you’ll take it in the spirit that’s intended which is just that I want to do my part in the two-way conversation!

And if you send in a question, you’ll be entered to win one of THREE Midlife Mixtape 100th episode Party Packs.

Pack 1: a bundle of books from past guests, including but not limited to The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell Antonia, Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun, and I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott.
Pack 2: a bundle of my favorite music-themed books, including but not limited to All I Ever Wanted by FUTURE ROCK HALL OF FAMER, Kathy Valentine of The Go-Gos. Finally, they are going in. I want to throw in Good Booty by Ann Powers, amazing book, and On Bowie by my favorite music writer, Rob Sheffield.
Pack 3: a Thank-You Project bundle, with a signed copy of my book. I’ll throw in some other stuff in there too. I’ve got stuff around. It’ll be interesting.

So send me your questions to [email protected] or drop them into social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. If you’re particularly interested in any one of the prize packs I just described, mention that too, and I’ll try to make it happen. I’ll pick winners at random to be announced in the 100th episode. So join me for the party on June 22nd.

When I asked a few weeks ago what listeners would do if they had a Midlife Gap Year, the most frequent response I got was “Travel.” Well, today’s guest, Michelle Fishburne, took a year off to do just that – and it’s quite a story.

Michelle moved into her motorhome in September 2020 and set off on a 12,000 mile road trip all over America, interviewing hundreds of people about their lives during the pandemic. Her project, called Who We Are Now, is being turned into a book that will be published by UNC Press in 2022. Prior to launching Who We Are Now, Michelle was a public relations and partnership director for national nonprofits, a homeschool teacher, a newspaper columnist, and an international corporate attorney.

Buckle up, kids, and let’s get on the road with Michelle Fishburne.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Michelle Fishburne, how are you today?

Michelle 06:11

I’m doing fine, Nancy. Thank you for having me on.

Nancy 06:15

Are you actually calling from an RV right now?

Michelle 06:17

Yes. As a matter of fact, I am sitting in my 2006 motor home that I’ve been living in ever since August.

Nancy 06:27

Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, I can’t wait to hear all about it. But there’s a different question that we start the show with every time and that is: what was your first concert, Michelle, and what were the circumstances?

Michelle 06:37

I believe my first concert was February 10th, 1984.

Nancy 06:42

Holy moly. That’s a level of specificity I never get. Go on.

Michelle 06:47

Well, I was trying to figure out what the first one was and so to be honest with you, I thought my first one was Boston. But I went in and I looked back at their concert history and I’m like, “Michelle, I don’t think that was your first one.” I went back into the Police concert history and sure enough, Greensboro Coliseum with my boyfriend from UNC because I was in college, February 10th, and it was the Police and the Reflex opened for them.

Nancy 07:16

I don’t remember… I feel like I remember the Reflex, but I am only thinking of the Duran Duran song, which is not a band so much as a song. How was the show?

Michelle 07:24

It was great. We were up in the rafters and it was pretty awesome. Sting is amazing, obviously.

Nancy 07:33

You must be a connoisseur of the road mix, the playlist that you have to have on when you’re driving. Do you have one for your… Is it offensive if I say RV, versus motorhome?

Michelle 07:44

No, a motorhome is a type of RV.

Nancy 07:46

Okay.

Michelle 07:47

Nancy, this is going to surprise you. It shocks most people. I do not listen to anything when I’m driving.

I drove 12,000 miles all over the United States without an audio book, without music of any type. People are really surprised. Earlier in my life when I was in my 20s and 30s, I always listened to music when I was going down the road, whether it was to work or whatever. But then my kids, when they got into their teenage years and I was homeschooling, they would have fights over whose music got to be played and so I said, “Okay, great. We’re just traveling in silence now.” I road schooled them all over the United States for 10 months once and then four months again, so I guess I just got used to driving in silence.

Nancy 08:37

I could never do that. In fact, it’s one of the big outcomes of the pandemic is I realize how much of my music consumption came while I was driving around and of course, I wasn’t going anywhere for 14 months. I’ve noticed the drop-off in terms of just time to listen to music. I’m looking forward to getting back on the road. My husband and I are planning a big 14-hour road trip in July, and I’m already thinking hmm, what will we listen to? I bow down to your ability to stay awake and keep moving. But obviously, you had a lot compelling you, so let’s dive right in.

You just mentioned you spent the last year plus covering 12,000 miles in your RV capturing the stories of real life from all over America and sharing them on your site, Who We Are Now. Can you talk about the changes that happened to you between January 2020 and August 2020 that lined you up for this trip?

Michelle 09:30

Sure. At the beginning of January 2020, I had an awesome job as a national PR director, public relations director, partnership director for a nonprofit foundation, and I loved my job and I got to fly all over the United States meeting with really interesting people and organizations about leveraging our message. I had some really cool things planned at the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, even was working on something with an A Lister. I don’t want to drop names, but he’s amazing.  And then the pandemic happened.

Nancy 10:04

You’ve got to drop the name. Just a clue to the name.

Michelle 10:08

Sure. The nonprofit is called Inmates to Entrepreneurs, and it’s about giving people truly a second chance. Because sometimes they can’t get jobs as ex-felons, so they start their own businesses. John Legend, as a matter of fact, has an accelerator that he supports giving business owners a second chance who served time in prison. I was working with John Legend’s people on a joint event, going into a prison with our founder, Brian Hamilton, while John was on tour, and they were going to be talking with the prisoners about entrepreneurship. So that was really exciting. I had a great job. But then when the pandemic hit, Brian said to me, “Michelle, I can’t do any of the national events you’re lining up and so I’m going to have to lay you off.”

Nancy 10:57

Great. That was early 2020, and I know some listeners have had some similar challenges in the past year so it’s relatable. What else happened?

Michelle 11:08

I thought, oh, no problem and I thought, I can network my way to the next job. Of course, that wasn’t possible. I was supposed to go to South By Southwest. It would be in my sixth time there and I thought, I’ll just pick up a job at South By. Well, South B­y obviously didn’t help. Fast forward to the middle of July, 86 customized cover letters later: I still did not have a job, not even interviews, and my youngest was going off to college, and the lease on my post-divorce house was up on July 31st.

Nancy 11:38

So you thought, “Well, I know what I’ll do. I’ll hop in an RV!” Take me back to the moment when you were facing all of those changes and adversity, and the answer popped into your head that you needed to get on the road.

Michelle 11:51

I was in a parking lot at Target around July 15th, and I thought, Michelle, you have to tell the movers where they’re moving your stuff to. It was really that basic. Like, “Time is running out, guy. Is it going into storage? Are you going to rent some place or buy someplace?”

Nancy 12:09

Where were you based at the time? Where were you living?

Michelle 12:10

Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So I thought, well, you’d be a fool to put roots down anywhere because you have no idea where this next job is coming from. And I thought, “Well, thank gosh, I have my 2006 motor home, and I know how to live in it for an extended period of time because I’ve done it before. So I’ll move into the motor home.” And then I thought, “Well, should I sit by the seashore and try to consult my way to the next job?” I didn’t hyperventilate, but I kind of hyperventilated in my mind and thought that sounds awful, because I would feel so scared that it wasn’t going to work. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue truly like a lightning strike, Humans of New York came to mind. Are you familiar with Humans of New York?

Nancy 12:54

I sure am, and I was going to ask you about parallels. So I’m glad you brought it up.

Michelle 12:56

Okay. I thought, wait a minute, I’ll do Humans of the United States During a Pandemic. Boom! I’ll get in my motor home, I’ll drive all over the United States interviewing people about their lives during the pandemic, and I can drive from here to Yellowstone with my eyes closed, although that wouldn’t be safe for anybody on the road. To me, going to Yellowstone from North Carolina is like driving to the grocery store. I’ve done it so many times. It’s not a big deal, and I thought I’ll just drive out to Yellowstone and back. No problem, I can do that.

I thought, “Well, this will be a portfolio project and I’ll show people, look, I created this from A to Z, got it on social media, got media heads, I have a website, so hire me.” The goal was to have a job by January.

Nancy 13:42

You didn’t really go into it thinking, “This is going to be an avocation that I can turn into a book that I can turn into a movement”? You thought it was how you were going to get your next job?

Michelle 13:53

Exactly.

Nancy 13:55

I mean, did you truly just think, “This is what I’m going to do, no problem, and here I go!”?

Or did you have any kind of internal resistance? I’m also going to ask you about external resistance because I wondered what your family and friends think, but let’s start with internal resistance.

Michelle 14:09

Zero internal resistance. If somebody said to me that I had to go park the motorhome by a gorgeous place at the beach, that’s where I would have had the internal resistance. That’s what sounded scary to me.

Nancy 14:19

And you had done it before, so that must have made it easier.

But again, what did your friends and family think when you said, “Hey guys, I’m moving everything into a storage unit and hitting the road!”

Michelle 14:31

My grandfather – in 1936 when he lost his job, he bought a trailer, and he and my grandmother lived in it for three years. I even have a newspaper clipping of the two of them pouring tea in their kitchen. And they enjoyed it so much that they were kind of a little bit disappointed to have to move back into a house. Then when my dad got sick of playing golf in the country club retirement community that they were in, they hit the road in 2002 and lived in their motor home for seven years.

Nancy 15:01

Wow. So it runs in the family for sure.

Michelle 15:04

Oh yeah, we’ve got an RV gene, I guess. My mom and dad were like, “Oh my God, this is going to be the best time of your life!” and my oldest daughter said, “Mom that’s so cool!” and my youngest daughter said, “Well, when I come home for Christmas, where’s home?”

Nancy 15:21

What was your answer?

Michelle 15:22

“I’ll figure that out.”

Nancy 15:23

What was it?

Michelle 15:24

I rented a house in Chapel Hill for a month over Christmas, so we could have some sense of normalcy.

Nancy 15:31

Now, you weren’t totally alone in the motor home, right? Is there a canine companion who I’ve noticed in your Instagram posts with crazy eyes?

Michelle 15:39

Buddy does have crazy eyes.

Nancy 15:42

Buddy looks like he would cut you if he didn’t like what you were feeding him, the treat. But he’s a little cute fur ball.

Michelle 15:48

He’s a little cute fur ball. His name is Buddy, obviously, I just said. He’s a Shih Tzu, and then the interesting thing is, as I was traveling all over the United States driving, one of my friends said, “Oh Travels with Charley” and I said, “What are you talking about?”

Nancy 16:05

Great John Steinbeck book.

Michelle 16:07

Right. In 1960, John Steinbeck had the same question: Who are we now? So he went ahead and got a camper, got his dog, Charley, who was a standard poodle. He drove 10,000 miles over the United States. I drove 12,000. Yes, John had Charley and I had Buddy.

But Steinbeck had bars, and I did not. He could go into a bar and strike up a conversation and get to know about the people.

Nancy 16:33

Okay, honestly, as a music fan, I was standing here thinking, “John Steinbeck could rap? I didn’t know that, that’s news to me.” Yes, he did go into bars. I remember reading that book in high school and thinking, “Who is this writer? I love him.” That book was my entree into John Steinbeck’s great body of work.

Michelle 16:53

Oh, wow.

Nancy 16:54

Buddy, he’s a good companion? Is he a watchdog? Is he just somebody there to snuggle with? I’m sure that’s delightful.

Michelle 17:02

He’s a slug. He literally doesn’t like to walk.

Nancy 17:03

He doesn’t need to. He’s driving. You mentioned Humans of New York, which – if you’ve been under a rock – you may not know this storytelling project that’s mostly on Instagram and Facebook. But it’s been turned into a wonderful book. This interviewer/photographer who goes out and finds these amazing stories that are so specific, and through the specifics become so universal.

Was storytelling always kind of the goal with what you thought was going to be your job-getting project? I mean, did you realize at some point, “Oh my gosh, these stories deserve to be a project of their own”?

Michelle 17:42

Well, I didn’t realize that. Other people realized it.

As somebody who’s has done public relations for invention, education and entrepreneurship, education, nonprofits for the past six, seven or so years, my favorite part of my job was telling the stories of the kindergartener through high schooler who came up with an invention because their aunt couldn’t do something anymore, or the kid across the block was challenged physically. So I fell into storytelling when my own daughter was 12 came up with an invention. I’ve been doing the storytelling and really loved it. I knew that I enjoyed hearing about other people’s experiences,

There’s something called Otter, it’s a transcription app.

Nancy 18:27

That’s what I use to do the transcription for this podcast.

Michelle 18:31

All I do is I tell the person, “Alright, when you talk to me, I’m just going to turn on this transcription app.” It’s on my phone, I just put it down, and the person starts to talk and it changes their words into a transcript. It’s very unobtrusive. As I’m listening to the person, I think they completely forget that they’re being recorded,.

There’s only one question in the interviews. When I ask that one question, people end up talking for 20, 35, 40 minutes, and then they breathe.

Nancy 18:59

Will you tell us what the question is?

Michelle 19:02

Of course. “It’s January 1st, 2020,” and then usually I pause because the person’s eyes either go wide open, or they look down, or they smile. There’s some emotion that comes with “gosh, can I get my head back to that time?”

So: “It’s January 1st 2020. What was your 2020 supposed to be like, and what did it end up being like through to the present?”

Nancy 19:26

Wow. That’s a powerful question.

We did an end of year episode on this show where I asked listeners to share a grief and a gratitude for 2020 that kind of taps into a similar vein. There’s so much there.

How did you find people to share their stories? When you go to the whoweare.us website, you’ll see such a wide variety of people of every variation. How did you find the people who you wanted to interview? And did you have to convince anyone to share their stories, or were they all eager to start talking?

Michelle 19:58

In the beginning, I just leaned on friends to tell me people they knew who they thought might have an interesting story. I also looked around my own community. When I was getting my legs underneath me, it was basically a one degree or two degree of separation project. But then when I got into the motor home, oh my god, I crashed and burned.

Nancy 20:20

Not literally.

Michelle 20:21

Right. I got out there and I had no idea how I was going to meet people. I originally thought, okay, well, editors of papers and reporters and radio hosts know their communities and I thought I would reach out to those people say, “Hey, would you meet with me?” But that had very minimal success, and so as I headed out on September 11th – I know, bad day to start – but that was when I started. I really crashed and burned through the first couple of states. When I stayed at campgrounds I asked people they were like, no, thanks.

Nancy 20:53

“No thanks, crazy lady with your crazy dog.”

Michelle 20:54

Right. No thanks. One guy said, “Hey, dog with the big eyes, no, stay away.” Then I started to think okay, maybe organizations like an art museum, the educators…the kids can’t come, how did they pivot? By and by, slowly, I started to get a little bit better at it, but I was pretty terrible at it until I got out to Wyoming, believe it or not. I had gone all the way out to Wyoming and by the time I realized that Facebook was what I needed.

What I would do is I’d say, “Okay, I’m driving from A to Z, from here to Topeka, whatever, on this next three or four hour trip.” There’s a town on the way that’s about the right size, where maybe if I went into Facebook, I would see some organizations or the local newspaper putting stuff out about what’s happening in the community, and that is the way I found out about the Kite Festival in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming.

When I showed up in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, which is a town of about 900 people, the woman said, “Why’d you come here?” And I said, “Because of the Kite Festival!” And she said, “It was just a Kite Festival, Michelle,” and I said, “You have no idea how much the people on the East Coast would give right now for a Kite Festival.”

But she was a connector. The first piece was Facebook. Then the second piece is when you find a connector in a community, they say, “Oh, well, why you’re here, you should talk to so and so and so and so and so and so.”

Nancy 22:22

So you had to get good at finding out who those connectors were.

Michelle 22:26

I never got good at it. You don’t know that you’ve run into a connector until it happens.

Nancy 22:31

I want to underline this for people listening because oftentimes, in midlife, we are scared to try something new. We’ve been doing something for 20 years, and we’re good at it. Starting off again, as a rank beginner who’s going to make mistakes is a scary feeling.

I talk about this all the time, about how I cannot go back and listen to my first podcast episodes because I was just getting started, I was probably making so many mistakes. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me if it’s true. But if you don’t get started, you can’t improve, and that’s totally what you experienced in your journey. It took you till Wyoming until you kind of knew what was happening. But if you hadn’t gotten on the road in North Carolina, you never would have gotten to Wyoming.

Michelle 23:15

I’ve got so many ways to respond to that.

Number one, when I was in Wyoming, I had no idea what was happening yet. Number two, a friend over Facebook this summer said, “Michelle, I’m sure your dad told you this all the time, but anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

Now, that is not how my dad brought me up. He has helped save the astronauts on Apollo 13. His view was anything worth doing is doing right the first time. But I started thinking about what she said, I’m like, “You’re right,” and that goes to your point about the podcast. So that gave me some grace.

Then another thing that was fresh in my mind and made things a lot less scary, is number one, the story of the old farmer, which I’ll tell in a second and number two, Who Moved My Cheese. Somebody asked me the other day, if you had to put something on a bumper sticker, what would it be? It would be Please Move My Cheese.

That harkens back to an old story. Who Moved My Cheese is a metaphor. It was a whole book in the 80s or 90s, and basically the premise is this: there are two mice. Every single day, they run through this maze, the same place and they get cheese.

One day, they get there there’s no cheese and they say, “Huh?” They come back the next day, no cheese. And the next day. One mouse, on like the third or fourth day, says, “There isn’t going to be any cheese. I’m going to go out into the maze and find a new cheese and it probably won’t be the same cheese, but I’m going to go out there and find some cheese.” The other mouse said, “No fam, thanks. I’m just going to stay here. The cheese is coming back.”

So I now know and I know, because of having an inventor daughter, that failure is something that I actually really embrace and look forward to, because it means I get to reiterate.

It means I get to innovate. It means that all those little gray cells in my head get to start spinning and creating something new. Now my motto is please move my cheese, so I get to do something cool again.

Nancy 25:12

Were there other big lessons that came about that surprised you in your journey?

Every time I use the word journey, I wince a little bit because I hate-watched The Bachelor with my daughter throughout the pandemic, and they get paid every time they say the word journey, I’m pretty sure. Like “the romantic journey,” and it has just ruined the word for me.

But this is an actual physical journey. So I’m using it and I do not accept this rose. Okay, go on.

Michelle 25:40

Well, I have only heard the word journey, because it made me think of Journey, the band, and their iconic songs that seems so appropriate to my journey, frankly.

Anyway, did I learn lessons on the journey? Of course. One of them is that I’m tired of being a deputy. I have been an A++ deputy all my life, and I am really excited about being my own boss, and just relying on myself. That would probably be the biggest one.

And then the second lesson was just a confirmation of something I already knew, which is that if you don’t really listen to how others view things, including your own journey, you’re missing out on so many opportunities.

Segueing back to the question you asked me about the project: when I was doing a talk in Henrietta, Oklahoma, in October to Alliance Club, a woman said to me, “So is this a book?’ And I was like, “No, it’s not a book.” But that started a whole bunch of other people in the following couple of weeks saying, “This is a book, Michelle. You understand you’re capturing history here. You’re doing a contemporaneous oral history of Americans lives during the pandemic, and it’s a mosaic and this has to be preserved for posterity, and it has to be a book.” I thought, “Huh.”

I reached out to the president of the Oral History Association, and I said – this me still in Deputy Mode – “Is there anybody else’s project that I should just let them know that I’m doing this and they can take mine up and make mine a part of theirs?”

Nancy 29:18

“I want to make sure they take all the credit. Can you just let me know what number I should call to allow them to do that?”

Michelle 27:24

Right. He responded in an hour and a half, which was amazing and he said, “Number one, don’t reach out to anybody else. This is your project. Nobody else is doing what you’re doing. By the way, what you’ve put together needs to be preserved and this is a book.”

Nancy 27:42

Now, it is a book coming out from UNC Press summer 2022, right?

Michelle 27:48

Fall 2022, probably, but yes, UNC Press. I just got off the phone this morning with my marketing director and author publicist from UNC Press, and we’re already starting to figure out how to let people know that it’s coming.

Nancy 28:03

So exciting. Alright. We’re going to talk more about what might or might not have been considered a Midlife Gap Year. But first, a word from our sponsor.

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[MUSIC]

And we’re back with Michelle Fishburne talking about Who We Are Now and her 12,000 miles in an RV around the United States during the pandemic. Right before we took a break, you mentioned a story about a farmer and I feel like we’ve got to close the loop on that. You want to share that one?

Michelle 29:31

Sure. One of the things that has helped me not have fear of the unknown or what’s next is an old adage I heard years ago and it’s about an old farmer who lives in a village.

All he has is his farm field and a horse and his son, and that’s it. He relied on his son to work the fields. Well, one day the horse runs away and so the villagers come to him and say, “Old man, this is such terrible news. We’re so sorry for you. This is so bad.” He said, “I don’t know that it’s bad. It could be good” and they all kind of scratch their heads and they went away.

Then a few days later, the horse comes back and he brings back with him several mustangs, and the villagers come out and they say, “Oh, old man, this is such good news. You must admit, this is good news.” He says, “No, no, might be bad.” You know how this plays out.

So next time, the son gets on one of the mustangs to try to tame it, and he falls off and he breaks his arm and can no longer plow the fields, and the old man’s too old to do it. The villagers come out and they say, “Look, you have got to admit this time that this is really bad news. You guys are going to starve. We’re so sorry.” He says, “I don’t know. It could be good news.”

Last one. Then the next day, the army comes through the town, and clicks up all the able-bodied men to go fight in a war that none of them ever returned from. But they don’t take the young man with the broken arm.

And that stays with me, because of the times of my life that I’ve walked through fire, or even the ones when it’s not fire, where something has just happened that I was disappointed in or made things more difficult. I just remember the farmer saying, “I don’t know if this is good or bad.” They say that there are two main emotions that people have, and everything follows from that — hope and fear. I think when things are good, we don’t rustle up fear inside ourselves, usually. But when things are bad or fearful, we need to tap into that hope.

Nancy 31:36

We’ve been talking about Midlife Gap Year. I had Lisette Smith on the last episode talking about how to get one and do some planning. But we talked a lot about how it can be a reset during what, for Gen X workers, will probably be a very long career, because none of us can afford to retire. The generation before us that was finished up with their work lives at 55… That seems like a real pipe dream.

So we’ve been talking about making a Midlife Gap Year a reset, and I wonder if you consider this journey a Midlife Gap Year.

Michelle 32:09

Okay, number one, I definitely consider this as a gap year. The fact that I was sending my own kid off to college, the youngest one at the time that this happened – I said to myself, “Michelle, you’ve told both of your kids, ‘Go ahead and invest in yourself if you want and take a gap year to figure out what you really want to do next.’” I had thought to myself, “Well, why are you saying to freeing them and saying, go to a gap year, if you’re not willing to give that same kind of love and support to yourself? Michelle, consider this a gap year.”

Nancy 32:42

The book is coming soon, which is its own job. What else is next for you? How long will you stay on the road?

Michelle 32:49

Oh, so this goes back to the reset question, which is that when I set out doing this, I just expected to be back employed full time in a sedentary, if you will, stationary position come January 2021. That was how I envisioned the rest of my life — Michelle in Washington doing PR for an international nonprofit, and being happy as a clam.

I now know that I would never be happy as a clam now doing that because I’ve hit this reset button. I have found this latent passion for spending as many hours a day as I can listening to other people’s stories. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I am a UNC grad. Charles Kuralt was a UNC grad. Charles Kuralt, On the Road…hey, I would love to do that. There’s also a person named Studs Terkel, who did NPR for many years and he had a book called Working and he just went all over the United States interviewing people about their jobs.

Nancy 33:57

My mom had that book when I was a kid and I used to sneak in her room and read it, because among the people he profiled was a prostitute. And I remember being like, “I’m nine and I’m learning new words!”

Michelle 34:43

Oh, that is so funny.

Nancy 34:44

It could be a whole new generation of young readers going, “what? I didn’t know. I’ve never heard of that before.”

Michelle 34:22

I see myself like my grandfather in 1938 when they really just didn’t want to move into a house because they enjoyed living in their trailer. I would be delighted if the next five years of my life is me continuing to live in a motor home traveling all over the United States. Or, maybe, I guess, have to get on a plane every once in a while, so not the motor home, all over the world interviewing people about their lives.

So this has been a complete reset for me because I have found what I truly, truly love to do and that doesn’t feel like work to me.

Nancy 34:57

That’s so awesome. Where can people find your stories and images and follow you on this trip?

Michelle 35:03

The website is whowearenow.us. There are over 100 stories on there, complete with photos so you can see what the person looks like too. Right now, I’m not doing new stories a day because I’m focused on the book. My manuscript is due at the end of June, but I’ll start posting new stories again in July. My Instagram is whowearenowusa same with Facebook, Who We Are Now. The behind the scenes Instagram account is Michelle Fishburne, which is just my name.

And I’m headed to the Big Apple this weekend. I’m going to be doing some really interesting interviews when I’m up in New York City. I haven’t been there since before the pandemic, and so the behind-the-scenes photos from New York should be interesting.

Nancy 35:48

Awesome. I’ll put links to all of your social media in the show notes to make it easy to find you. I have one last question for you. But I have a pre-question. Here’s the tea. I did not see Nomadland because my best friend said to me, “Nancy, Nomadland makes Minari seem like an action flick.”

I loved Minari, but I didn’t know if I could go down another level of energy from Minari during a pandemic. So I just have to ask on behalf of everyone who has seen Nomadland, did you see it? If so, are there parallels? Did you feel it was accurate? I mean, what was your response when you saw Nomadland?

Michelle 36:23

I wasn’t going to see it because I heard it was really depressing. Then somebody said, “No, Michelle, it kind of is a delightful celebration of the people who full time on the road.” I think that is a bunch of baloney. I don’t think it wasn’t delightful celebration.

Nancy 36:38

My friend gave me a very graphic description of the scene with the bucket and the gastrointestinal distress, and I’m like, yeah, I can’t do that during a pandemic. I don’t want to watch that scene.

Michelle 36:52

No, I mean I found it to be very, very depressing and not uplifting, frankly. But the thing that I thought was really interesting is part of it was shot in the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, and they were at the one of my favorite campgrounds in the world there. When I saw it, I thought, oh! That made me smile. But that was about the only time I smiled during this.

Nancy 37:17

Okay. Listeners, if you saw Nomadland and loved it, let us know. Let us know what you loved about it. One of my friends said, “I’m scared to see it because I fear it is a glimpse into my retirement years.” People have a lot of thoughts about it.

Alright, so we always ask this final question, what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Michelle 37:38

It’s the piece of advice I just gave to myself recently. It’s kind of scary to do it. But it’s what can also set you free in terms of figuring out what you really love and what you’re really made of. When I was in my late 20s, I didn’t know what I was made of, so I jumped out of a plane. I don’t necessarily recommend that.

Nancy 37:59

Michelle, let’s get some facts here. With a parachute?

Michelle 38:23

With a parachute. It was a tandem jump. But I had been apparently monkeying with the housing on my jacket before we went up to 12,000 feet, and so when I hit the ripcord, it didn’t open.

Nancy 38:18

Oh my God, my palms are so sweaty. What did they do?

Michelle 38:22

My tandem partner hit the emergency chute.

Nancy 38:28

What did that teach you? I mean, why would you make that part of your advice to your younger self? What would you say? “Stop monkeying with your jacket?”

Michelle 38:35

I’m just saying if you want to know what you’re made of, if you want to know who you really are, then I would have to go back to the D. H. Lawrence quote, which I currently have on post-it notes on my motorhome.

This is the quote, “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Nancy 38:59

That’s a good one to have on post-it notes around us.

Michelle 39:04

Because you know why? Recently, I talked to somebody and I said, “I’m just going to go ahead and apply for this job.” It would have been a sedentary, sit down for the rest of your life job. A friend of mine said to me, “Wait a minute, you’re halfway up the mountain. You have a book that people are very, very interested in. You’re being interviewed. You’re in Good Housekeeping. You’re on ABC TV. You have this path in front of you that seems so compelling. Why would you parachute back down to the base now?” Then I thought oh, she’s so right.

Nancy 39:35

Yeah, it’s interesting. For an editorial client of mine, I interviewed some guys who founded a really cool direct to consumer cookware company. I’m not going to give them an infomercial. But I’ll tell you that after I interviewed them, I did go buy all their products. That’s what I do. As soon as I get an editorial paycheck, I’m like, “I’m going to go spend it on the person who I just interviewed.”

But one of the things that they talked about was how important it was to not have a safety net when they started this business. Because it was three guys and they knew that everybody was going to be completely devoted to the success of this new company, because they had nothing else. I thought a lot about that: when you have that safety net, it can be a trap too. It can be that thing that prevents you from getting on the road or swimming out from shore. I think you have to be very conscious of not taking the road more traveled when it’s right in front of you.

Michelle 40:40

Wow, and what a nice segue into the journey of 12,000 mile.

Nancy 40:45

Right. Oh, we’re good team.

Alright, well, Michelle Fishburne, the new Charles Kuralt: best of luck! Don’t crash and burn literally, ever, give your dog a big smooch for me, and we will look forward to keeping track of your journey on all your social media, looking for the book next fall.

Michelle 41:03

Sounds great. Thanks, Nancy. Have a great day.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 41:09

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons – I hope you were inspired by Michelle’s story of turning what was definitely bad news in 2020, or at least according to that farmer’s neighbors was bad news, into the good news of a book deal and a completely new avocation as an oral historian. I loved every part of her story except the silent driving part that sounds like torture to me. I don’t know about that.

Remember! Next time is our 100th episode! Ask me anything – give me a break from formulating the interview outline! Save me some work. I don’t want to have to think of the questions. You guys think of the questions. Remember, three people who send in questions will win prize packs! So email [email protected] or drop your questions into social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @midlifemixtape. If you’re particularly interested in one of the prize packs I mentioned, remember there’s the past guest book pack, there’s the music book pack, and there’s the thank you project book pack. Mention that when you ask your question too, and I’ll try to make it happen. I’ll pick the winners at random and announce them on June 22nd in the 100th episode.

Now I need to research a signature cocktail. I’m going to make sure we have enough ice, and I got to start hanging the streamers for June 22nd. I can’t believe it!

Thanks so much for listening, everyone, and have a wonderful week!

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

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